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Palmieri: 'Year of action' includes Congress

White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri on Wednesday insisted that President Barack Obama’s “year of action” will not preclude working with Congress on legislation.

“This is not an either/or situation,” she told moderator Lois Romano at POLITICO’s post-State of the Union event. “The president wants to pursue all the avenues that he has, so he wants to work with Congress where he an and he wants to act on his own where he can.”

Republicans have reacted negatively to the president’s assertion that he will turn to executive action where Congress is slow to act, creating a firestorm of accusations of overreach and a series of remarks mocking his “power of the pen and phone” comments.

“[H]e’s not president of Washington, he’s president of America,” Palmieri added.

Explaining the process behind crafting the State of the Union speech, Palmieri said that the vision presented by the president isn’t intended solely as a laundry list of policy initiatives for the coming year but as a broader set of goals for years to come, extending even beyond his presidency.

“He happens to be president these eight years, and the way he looks at the job and certainly the way he approaches the State of the Union, is, ‘Ok, what can we accomplish, what can we get done?'” she said. “He understands it’s a long continuum, so he’s looking at what can be set into motion for the next president.”

Palmieri also noticed that the president’s style has made the inherently adversarial aspects of her job easier.

“More so than anyone I’ve ever worked for he has that ability to look beyond what is happening now,” she added. “It made getting through the fall for the White House communications director a lot easier to have a president says, ‘I understand what is happening and what is happening with the press.'”